Keith Olbermann Articles

The personification of the angry left. His rants are legendary and his behavior has earned him the well-deserved nickname “Keith Overbearing.” Fired by MSNBC in late 2010, we expect his Current TV program to be more of the same.

Back in 1986 Keith Olbermann won a semi-prestigeous Golden Mike Award when he was a silly-looking sportscaster on KNX-TV in Los Angeles

Randy Kerdoon currently does news at KNX Newsradio in Los Angeles and he found a copy of Olbermann’s award in the trash bin when KNX was moving from one building to another.

Keith Olbermann, circa 1986: If there was ever a guy who looked like he should be delivering pizza in a bad porn movie, this is he

When we found out that Randy had offered the Golden Mike for sale on eBay, we realized that we wanted it more than life itself. After all, who wouldn’t want a little piece of a broadcasting legend like Olbermann.

We weren’t sure what we’d do with it, but there are always doors that need to be propped open and bugs that need to be squished, so we were pretty sure it would come in handy.

We were willing to go as high as $200. The bidding on eBay rapidly reached $129, but then just sat at that price day after day. The bidding was scheduled to end at about 4:40 p.m. last Sunday so we it flagged on our calendar, fully intending to swoop in at the last minute and place the winning bid.

Then we got busy watching Goodfellas on TV for the 27th time and just plain forgot about Olbermann’s award. Our computer was in the next room and we didn’t hear it beeping out its alerts and the damn award sold for the $129 ($145 including shipping).

LARadio.com reports the results of the auction:

The ‘Mike’ sold for over $145 including shipping to a Keith Olbermann fan in Texas. Her reason for buying it was touching. Seems she and her husband were watching Olbermann co-host the Vice-Presidential debates at night a few years ago. Her husband wasn’t feeling well. He excused himself to go to bed and told her as he left ‘now you just stay down here with Keith.’ He passed away the next day. So basically the last real conversation she had with her husband was about Keith Olbermann.

If the Editor dies tomorrow morning, Mrs Editor will remember that the last story he ever wrote was about Keith Olbermann.

It must be horrible to be Keith Olbermann. He moved his show from MSNBC over to Al Gore’s Current TV, but the only thing “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” is counting down is viewers. Not by tens or hundreds but by the thousands.

Keith Olbermann using fingers on both hands to count his viewers

According to The Wrap:

“Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” the cornerstone of [Current TV’s] new politics-focused slate, saw its ratings dip to a new low last week in the most important demo — adults between the ages of 25 and 54.”

Overall viewership was up over the prior week, but ratings have not sniffed the levels of Olbermann’s debut frame, when he drew an average of 354,000 viewers and 131,000 in the demo. The numbers for last week were 208,000 overall and 85,000 in the demo.

You know a TV show is in trouble when it has more guests than viewers.

Oh, how Keith Olbermann longs for those glorious days of his youth when the streets were filled with protesters and the air was filled with smoky haze of a million joints.

Here’s his plaintive response to the passing of the debt ceiling deal:

And the only response is to be organized and unified and hell-bent in return. We must find again the energy and the purpose of the 1960′s and early 1970′s and we must protest this deal and all the God damn deals to come, in the streets. We must arise, non-violently but insistently. General strikes, boycotts, protests, sit-ins, non-cooperation take-overs – but modern versions of that resistance, facilitated and amplified, by a weapon our predecessors did not have: the glory that is instantaneous communication.

The problem with this concept is that Keith Olbermann’s audience couldn’t fill a phone booth, much less the streets of a small village.

Guests generally appear on most broadcast and cable news shows for free. They do it for the exposure, to help them sell books or newspaper columns or to build reputations. But that’s not how it currently works over at Current TV.

We would imagine that Olbermann has to pay people to be guests at his home, too

Business Insider has the inside info:

Interesting tidbit form Keith Olbermann’s Q&A with Cindy Adams in today’s New York Post.

Here’s how Olbermann made sure his new Countdown on Current got good guests: he pays them.

Being a smaller network, any difficulty in getting A-1 guests?

“It was a concern considering we’re starting from scratch, so I decided to formalize guests. Pay them even if it’s not much money. Make law professors, nonpolitical people, contributors. We built this in a matter of weeks, but the baseline is we’ve formalized it so it wouldn’t be a problem.

Paying guests is unusual, but certainly not unheard of. We wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Olbermann has to pay viewers, too.

Keith Olbermann is once again demonstrating the same ratings magic that has become his hallmark on stops at every major broadcast and cable network on his resume. Only now he’s demonstrating it on a minor one.

Keith Olbermann has made a career out of losing jobs and audiences

Deadline.com reveals that the more people watch Olbermann, the less people want to watch Olbermann:

Ratings for Current’s new incarnation of Countdown With Keith Olbermann were bound to fall in the show’s second week as the curiosity factor wore off and people began their July 4 vacations. Still, the numbers from last week are bracing: Olbermann attracted an average of 93,000 viewers in its target 25-54 demo, down 29% from the first week. The total audience, at 253,000, was down 28.5%. The numbers account for people who watched the 8 PM ET broadcast live, or the same evening on their DVRs.

Current has little reason to be alarmed just yet. It’s attracting far more than the average of 15,000 viewers who tuned in to the time slot during the four weeks before Olbermann moved in. Last Wednesday’s broadcast handily beat Eliot Spitzer on CNN’s In The Arena …

Apparently, being bested by Olbermann is now the very definition of failure. CNN canned Spitzer about two minutes after reading this ratings report.

… Olbermann has said that he won’t focus on week-to-week ratings while Countdown finds its rhythm, and audience.

Finding a rhythm is a piece of cake for Olbermann. Finding an audience has always proved a lot more elusive.

If there were ever three kindred spirits, they would have to be Keith Olbermann, Anthony Weiner and Al Gore. Dickhead, dick, and dickless.

Olbermann, making the rounds of the media to promote the premiere of his new show on Gore’s failed Current TV, responded when Jimmy Fallon asked if Weiner might eventually end up on CNN.

Don't worry, Keith. No one will be listening, no one will be watching.

CBS News reports the former MSNBC host’s supposedly witty riposte:

“Well, you know, I’ve got a nine o’clock show that I am probably going to hire somebody for,” Olbermann told Fallon, referring to the space immediately after his upcoming new show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV.
Fallon asked Olbermann if would hire Weiner.

“Eliot Spitzer is doing okay on CNN at eight o’clock,” Olbermann replied with a smile.

Spitzer’s doing OK? Looks like Olbermann is playing as fast and loose with the truth as ever.

Friday, the night that Olbermann uttered these words, Bill O’Reilly had over 3,000,000 viewers. Nancy Grace wrangled in 1,677,000 on HLN. Lawrence O’Donnell attracted 903,000 to MSNBC. And Spitzer drew a mere 541,000.

So now we know what Current considers the benchmark of success: Half the viewers of the number three show in the time slot.

He [Gore] added that the decision reflected how News Corporation operated worldwide. “News Corporation is an international conglomerate with an ideological agenda. It seeks political power in every nation they operate. They wield that power to shut down voices that disagree with the agenda of Rupert Murdoch,” Gore said.

The decision, he added, was “a complete shock” but Current TV executives were told “off the record that the decision was taken on News Corp instructions from New York”. The primary reason, he said, was “because Current is launching Keith Olbermann next month”.

Olbermann – who styles himself as a leftwing alternative to the rightwing shock jock journalism of Fox News – worked at rival cable news network MSNBC until he left abruptly in January. This came after he was briefly suspended by MSNBC in November for making donations to three Democratic candidates in the midterm elections without seeking prior approval, in breach of company rules. “Olbermann has often been critical of News Corporation,” Gore added.

It’s always someone else’s fault with liberals. Why can’t Gore just accept that no one in Italy wants to watch an American network that even Americans don’t want to watch?

Gasbag Keith Olbermann can’t seem to wrangle staff for his Current TV show, “Countdown.” Still in need of an executive producer and other staff, famously difficult Olbermann has crawled back to his contacts at MSNBC, many of whom he offended while there, to beg for staff. “Everyone is laughing,” said a source. “They would never leave the network to work for him.”

Can Keith Olbermann increase the audience at Al Gore’s Current TV? Well, let’s just say that the bar has been set pretty damn low.

The Hollywood Reporter has the devastating details:

You could fit all of Current TV's viewers in an average NBA arena. With room to spare.

Olbermann’s Current show will likely premiere in late May, when the non-compete clause in his exit agreement with NBC Universal will have reached its conclusion. Sources tell THR that that agreement also stipulates that Olbermann cannot work for any network considered a competitor.

“He had no choice but to go to a place like Current because his non-compete excluded just about every other place,” said an MSNBC insider.

Current averaged 18,000 homes in primetime for fourth quarter 2010, lower than any other network measured by Nielsen.

They averaged just 18,000 homes? For god’s sake, man, that’s pathetic. When a network has fewer viewers than IHateTheMedia.com has readers, you have nowhere to go but up.

As we reported the other day, MSNBC’s ratings have completely tanked since Olbermann was unceremoniously shown the door. The universe of far left television have proven to be a mere sliver of the population, so one would assume that there will be a direct relationship between any increase in Current TV viewers and a decrease in MSNBC viewers.

Keith Olbermann’s last show on MSNBC was on Friday, January 21. Who would have guessed that he was the glue that held that network together? Without him, its ratings have fallen off a cliff.

Look at this comparison of ratings and audience size on Thursday, February 10 vs. Thursday, January 21, the day before Keith Olbermann’s sudden departure from MSNBC.

It shows that Fox has picked up huge numbers of viewers and CNN has picked up considerably fewer viewers, but MSNBC has absolutely imploded. Wow. It must be vodka and prescription drug time around 30 Rock.

Network

Show

Jan 21

Feb 10

(+/-)

Fox

O’Reilly

2,918,000

3,325,000

+407,000

Fox

Baier

1,940,000

2,335,000

+395,000

Fox

Hannity

2,079,000

2,293,000

+214,000

Fox

Beck

1,780,000

2,243,000

+463,000

Fox

Shep

1,786,000

1,936,000

+150,000

Fox

Greta

1,460,000

1,744,000

+286,000

MSNBC

8:00 PM

1,106,000

843,000

-267,000

CNN

Morgan

1,025,000

941,000

-86,000

MSNBC

9:00 PM

976,000

765,000

-211,000

MSNBC

10:00 PM

855,000

575,000

-280,000

CNN

Cooper

826,000

740,000

+86,000

MSNBC

6:00 PM

760,000

592,000

-168,000

MSNBC

7:00 PM

700,000

677,000

-23,000

MSNBC

5:00 PM

612,000

844,000

+232,000

CNN

Blitzer

524,000

1,036,000

+512,000

CNN

ParkerSpitzer

522,000

724,000

+202,000

Let’s analyze these numbers by hour rather than by host, because, quite honestly, we tried breaking it down that way but the shuffling of hosts made it almost impossible for us to comprehend our own analysis.

Keith Olbermann's word of the day is "scheudenfreude"

MSNBC 5:00 – This was the one bright spot for MSNBC. Matthews actually increased his audience from 612,000 on January 20 to 844,000 on February 10 for a gain of 232,000. It’s such a bizarre anomaly in the overall MSNBC disaster that we don’t quite know what to make of it. So let’s just say congratulations, Chris. It appears that you are now MSNBC’s biggest star. Of course, that concept must be driving MSNBC programming executives onto the ledges atop 30 Rock.

MSNBC 6:00 – When they call Cenk Uygur a temporary fill-in host, the emphasis is on temporary. He took Ed Schultz’ 760,000 viewers and turned them into 592,000 viewers. Losing 168,000 viewers is no way to get yourself a full-time gig, Cenkie.

MSNBC 7:00 – Many years ago the Editor had to attend a big quarterly board meeting in New York City. His office had miserable numbers and he dreaded having to report them to the New York bigwigs. He was seated to the immediate left of the Chairman of the Board. When it came time for each office to report it’s quarterly numbers, the Chairman started on his right and went around the table. One after another, each office manager reported worse results than the previous one had. By the time it got to the Editor, he was able to say, “Well, we aren’t making what we’d hoped for, but we’re still turning a slight profit” and the room erupted in applause simply because the numbers sucked less than everyone else’s. That’s the position Chris Matthews finds himself in. The bad news? He lost 23,000 viewers. The good news? Everyone else at MSNBC lost a lot more.

Ed Schultz is red-faced and angry about the ratings. Oh, wait. That's just his normal appearance and has absolutely nothing to do with the ratings.

MSNBC 8:00 – Keith Olbermann’s numbers were nothing to brag about, but O’Donnell makes him look like a ratings god. The time slot has gone from 1,106,000 viewers with Olbermann at the helm to a meager 843,000 with O’Donnell. Career enhancement opportunities do not follow losing 267,000 viewers in 30 days.

MSNBC 9:00 – So much for those tall tales of Rachel Maddow’s star power. Without Olbermann as her lead-in she lost 211,000 viewers.

MSNBC 10:00 – Poor Ed Schultz was convinced that the only thing keeping him from success even bigger than his head was a better time slot. So in the wake of Olbermann’s departure, MSNBC moved him from his 5:00 fringe-of-prime time slot to the much-coveted 10 pm slot. The audience responded by pretending Ed was a sinking ship and they were rats. Not only did Ed attract 185,000 fewer viewers at 10 pm than he did at 5 pm, but he also managed to lose 280,000 of the viewers that Lawrence O’Donnell had attracted when he filled the 10 pm slot. Nice work, Ed. We would have said that was impossible, but you proved us wrong.

Just when you thought it was impossible for Keith Olbermann to attract an audience smaller than the one he had at MSNBC, he proves you wrong. He’s moving to Al Gore’s unwatched and unwatchable Current TV.

Neither Mr. Olbermann, his representatives, or executives from Current TV would comment on the move, but they did not deny that the channel, which counts former Vice President Al Gore as one of its founders, will become at least one partner in Mr. Olbermann’s future media plans.

One of the people with knowledge of the plans said Mr. Olbermann would have an equity stake in Current TV. The people insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized by their employers to comment in advance of the official announcement. …

Current TV has set up a presentation with advertisers for Wednesday afternoon in Manhattan to announce its future plans. The channel may be betting on Mr. Olbermann to put it on the cable map. The low-rated five-year-old channel needs the help. Targeting young people, it originally subsisted on YouTube-style submissions and video journalists. More recently it started producing and acquiring traditional television series, like repeats of “This American Life.” …

A move to Current TV would challenge Mr. Olbermann’s fans of his MSNBC show — where he drew about a million viewers a night — to follow him to a channel that is considerably less accessible. Current TV is available in only about 60 million homes, and is usually available only on the digital tier of cable television systems, which requires a separate receiver. MSNBC, which is owned by NBC Universal, is available in 85 million homes and is almost always available as a basic cable entry.

We are, of course, television programming experts here at IHateTheMedia.com. So with all due respect we humbly suggest that Gore and Olbermann team up to do a Hannity & Colmes style show.

Unfortunately, the name Dumb & Dumber has already been taken. How about Pompous & Pompouser?

We have bad news for those of you hoping for a reunion between Rupert Murdoch and Keith Olbermann. It ain’t gonna happen. Murdoch has made it clear he doesn’t want the obnoxious former MSNBC host anywhere near Fox Sports.

The Daily Caller has the disappointing details:

In a FNC interview that aired Wednesday, host Neil Cavuto asked News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch if he would consider rehiring Olbermann, who was canned from the network.

“No,” Murdoch said. ”We fired him once, we don’t believe in firing people twice.”
“You called him a ‘nut,’” Cavuto said.

“Well he was a nut on…We had him on ‘Late Night Fox Sports’…It was impossible,” Murdoch said.

Olbermann worked at Fox from 1998 to 2001, when Murdoch gave him the boot.
“I fired him…He was crazy,” Murdoch said.

C’mon, Rupert. Don’t you think it would be fun to rehire Olbermann just so you can fire him again? Kind of like Val Halen does with David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar every couple years.

Hire him, Rupert. Fire him, Rupert. Make his head spin like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

Bill O’Reilly took a few minutes to ruminate about The Olbermann Incident without mentioning his former competitor by name. Not once. And from Olbermann’s point of view, that’s probably the worst insult O’Reilly could have delivered.

“They took one of their guys out and then they’re moving everybody else around. Doesn’t matter who he is or why they took him out,” O’Reilly said. “[I] don’t want to get involved with any of that personal stuff.”

When he says they’re moving everybody else around, we’re pretty sure he means like deck chairs on the Titanic.

O’Reilly noted that MSNBC was ranked 28th overall in cable ratings, which he said demonstrated failure, especially considering the fact the network has the resources of NBC behind it.

“Sure, look — we know the double standard, but it is and we’ve accepted the double standard, Bernie and I have because we can’t do anything about it,” O’Reilly said. “Bernie left CBS. I left CBS. Now we are here at Fox News. But let me ask you this: When you read in the print press about all of this garbage and that’s what it is, this network with NBC’s resources behind it to be ranked 28th is a disgrace. That’s a failure. Now they could squeeze out a few million dollars of profit, I guess, but it’s a failure. But the Fox News Channel is a colossal success – colossal success. You never read that. I very rarely read that.”

Last November, Glenn Beck was bestowed with the honor of being named World’s Worst Person by Keith Olbermann.

What had Beck done to deserve this singular honor? He had the temerity to predict that Olbermann would be dumped by Comcast as soon as it completed its acquisition of NBC. They were, Beck said, more interested in building an audience and generating profits than spewing left wing propaganda.

Those opinions, Olbermann said, were proof that Beck knows nothing – absolutely nothing – about the television businsss.

The wackos over at the Huffington Post are taking Keith Olbermann’s firing pretty hard. They left an amazing 34,000 comments in the first 24 hours after their hero got blown out of MSNBC. While the comments over at Daily Kos were filled with anger and invective, the comments at the Huffington Post were filled with mourning – sad, delusion mourning – as if someone had died.

Everyone on the left is taking Keith Olbermann's departure very badly

Welcome to the brave new world of the United Corporations of America.

Let’s all do one last Woodstock Nation with mostly the sixities folks at the Lincoln Memorial with the real heavyweigh­t music of our time and headline with Keith Olbermann lighting us up with a call to real freedom and show this country what real liberals look like.

He was the anti-Glenn Beck. I really hope Al Jazeera English plans to fill the niche. It seems to be the only news channel in America that tells the truth.

Ouch! Losing Keith … that’s a gut punch … 🙁

CHOMSKY!!! Now there is a man who should be heard from more.

Keith fought for us for eight years. Now it’s up to us.

It is a disgustingly tragic commentary on the state of our “exceptional” country when Glenn Beck continues to defile our airwaves while Olbermann is silenced and the “will of the people” ignored.

You do realize that since corporations deduct expenses like severance pay, they pay less in taxes by firing Keith, which means that we taxpayers are subsidizin­g their firing.

Is there no way to organize a serious boycott of Comcast and the FCC and the Justice Department and Genachowski (sp?) and Holder personally? Maybe Firedoglake will start something

Logged on to see the comment Count. Wow! When we love somebody, we LOVE somebody. : )) Come back soon, somehow, Keith.

And here’s a bonus comment. It’s one we just couldn’t pass up because it demonstrates in a mere 18 words just how crazy the left is. And, well, to tell you the truth, we can’t help but agree with it:

I love Rachel but no one, absolutely no one besides Weiner and Grayson says it like Keith does.

The left wing wackos over at the Daily Kos are not happy about Keith Olbermann getting fired. In fact, that’s an undestatement. The Kossacks are mad as frothing dogs. Of course, conspiracy theories run rampant.

The Kossacks are frothing-at-the-mouth mad and they see conspiracies everywhere

Here are some of our favorites:

This is the cover story that The Illuminati want us to believe!! No rest until the truth comes out even if I have to blog from a FEMA camp!

As a conspiracy theory attorney, I have some advice for Olbermann if he wants to contact me.

After killing Kennedy and imploding the World Trade Center, firing Olbermann was nothing for “them”.

Dammit, Get Oliver Stone on the phoine!! Have him and Alex Jones write the screenplay! And voila a Academy Award Film!

K O should run for mayor of New York

A perfect marriage would be the new Oprah channel giving Keith a show. They need viewers and awareness–he needs an outlet.

Next up: Hannity and Olbermann
Colmes is a wuss.

Keith was paid off so Fox News would be happy..
and not give Comcast a hard time in future cable contracts..

Communications director
Head of VoA or USAID, maybe FCC, etc. Something where he got to use his brain and passion productively in an area of experience.

I suspect it has to do with exactly two things:
Joe and Scarborough

And here’s a bonus Daily Kos comment. We tossing it into the mix because it was so filled with anger that it made us laugh:

Comcast is lying sack of shit
They train their employees to lie to customers. Virtually every single time I called Comcast about cable TV problems, they lied to me, covering up any fault on their part. I’m sick of them.
Absolutely firing KO was part of this rancid, fetid, wreaking turd of a merger.

Uh-oh. Looks like Keith Olbermann has worn out his welcome at yet another TV network. The worst person who ever called anyone else the World’s Worst Person is suddenly, unexpectedly out at MSNBC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWX9QtUwWa4

The Los Angeles Times has the big news:

MSNBC announced Friday night that its marquee “Countdown” anchor and talk show host Keith Olbermann was out. The network did not provide a reason for his abrupt departure.

“MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract. The last broadcast of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC’s success and we wish him well in his future endeavors,” NBC Universal said in a statement.

Olbermann and his bosses have clashed in recent months. He was suspended in November for two days after revelations that he gave donations to a Democratic political candidate, which was a violation of the company’s ethics policies for news employees.

Our guess is that Ed Schultz is next to go. C’mon, the guy’s act is horrible.

Looks like MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is off his medications again. He’s erupted in a flurry of off-color tweets aimed at anyone who has the temerity to challenge his super superior intellect and/or support Fox News.

Richard Nixon once told the California press, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” We enter 2011 praying that Keith Olbermann will be there for us to kick around all year long.

There’s nothing that gets us in more of a schadenfreude-ish mood this time of year than finding out that things aren’t going well for Keith Olbermann. And this story has our schadenfreude meter pegged all the way to the right.

PoliticsUSA.com reports the bad news for Olbermann and the good news for us:

Keith Olbermann waves good-bye to some of his viewers

The bad news keeps coming for MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. The 2010 ratings data is starting to trickle in, and the news is not so great for the Countdown host. In a down year for cable news where all three networks registered a decline in viewers, Keith Olbermann lost 11% of his total audience, but what is most troubling is that among the coveted age 25-54 demographic Olbermann lost 25% of his audience.… Keith Olbermann’s total drop in viewership was 2% higher than MSNBC’s network average, (11% vs 9%). In contrast, Rachel Maddow lost less of her audience than MSNBC as a whole. Maddow only declined by 6% compared to the network’s 11%. Maddow’s total loss was almost half of her lead in Olbermann, (6% compared to 11%). Olbermann also lost a higher than network percentage of those viewers age 25-54. MSNBC lost 18%. Olbermann lost 25%. Maddow only lost 14%.

As Freud said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” And as schadenfreude said, “Sometimes a horse’s ass is just a horse’s ass.”

That pathetic sound you hear is Keith Olbermann whimpering over in the corner. The New York Times has undoubtedly devastated the left wing lunatic by naming someone else as this generation’s Edward R. Murrow.

Keith Olbermann is Edward R. Murrow. Just ask him.

We don’t want to get in the middle of this little spat, so we’ll just let the Times explain its own bizarre designation:

Did the bill pledging federal funds for the health care of 9/11 responders become law in the waning hours of the 111th Congress only because a comedian took it up as a personal cause?

And does that make that comedian, Jon Stewart — despite all his protestations that what he does has nothing to do with journalism — the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow?

… Though the scale of the impact of Mr. Stewart’s telecast on public policy may not measure up to the roles that Mr. Murrow and Mr. Cronkite played, Mr. Thompson said, the comparison is legitimate because the law almost surely would not have moved forward without him. “He so pithily articulated the argument that once it was made, it was really hard to do anything else,” Mr. Thompson said.

How dare they? Why, this is an insult to Olbermann, MSNBC’s self-styled heir to the Murrow legend. Look for him to demand satisfaction. A duel at sunrise, perhaps. The Times’ choice of weapons.

In lieu of a duel, we certainly expect the Times to be named Worst Person in the World. And they deserve that title.

After all, does Jon Stewart sign off his show by saying, “Good night and good luck” like Murrow did? No. Does Jon Stewart remind his viewers that he is the heir to Murrow’s courage and tenacity? No. Is Jon Stewart a pompous ass with no viewers? Oh, wait. That’s an entirely different subject.

We’ve been racking our brain and we just can’t recall President Obama complaining when his left wing cohorts called George Bush a Nazi. But now, now that Keith Olbermann has compared Obama to the Nazis, he’s decided that those comparisons are verboten.

Don't blame us. Keith Olbermann said it.

Politico.com has the tale of Obama’s displeasure:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs advised the liberal commenter Keith Olbermann on Monday to refrain from using comparisons to Nazi Germany after the MSNBC host likened President Obama’s deal on tax cuts to Nazi appeasement.

“Whenever you compare anything to what the Nazis did, if you ever get to that point in your speech, stop, because nothing does, and hopefully, God willing, nothing ever will,” Gibbs told reporters.

Olbermann was reportedly devastated by the news that the President doesn’t tune in to catch his nightly therapy session.

“The President doesn’t watch my show? But I went to an Ivy League-ish school. I read James Thurber on the air every Friday. I was once fired by Rupert Murdoch. I say ‘good night and good luck’ at the end of my show just like Edward R. Murrow. The only conclusion I can draw from this unwarranted rejection is that Obama really is a Nazi.”